The Delicate Dilemma Affair
by RoseLight
Summary: Confronted with Imogene's infidelity, Illya must choose between his pride and his heart.


THE DELICATE DILEMMA AFFAIR

Imogene was pregnant

Paternity was in doubt.

A week after he learned the truth, Illya was still processing the fact. She had been living with him for nearly a year, and he had considered their relationship a success. He had never met a soul more understanding about his odd hours or frequent out-of-town business junkets. Without a word, she understood his hunger for solitude and peace. Instinctively, Imogene knew when it was time to tease him out of his brooding, to free his mind and soul with simple play and delight. Her presence in his life was warm and welcome. He never dreamed she would stray.

Theirs was a traumatic meeting. Kuryakin had been walking home from a Greenwich club, and heard a commotion in the alley. His eyes were adjusted to the dark and he saw her , backed against the bricks, screaming, making ineffectual swipes to defend herself from some neighborhood toughs. A couple of well-placed kicks and a guttural threat chased her attackers away. Imogene was shivering, bleeding, crying against a trash can. Illya reached down to offer her a hand and she clung to him.

It was New York City: of course there were numerous social agencies to assist endangered females. But she was frail and frightened and unwilling to let him go. Likewise, he understood too much about trauma victims to turn her over to bureaucrats in the middle of the night. Kuryakin took her to his apartment, where he tended to her injury, offered her a drink and settled her on his couch for the night.

Over the next few days, he coaxed her to share her story, but Imogene was as mysterious about her past as Illya was about his. Perhaps it was why he did not pursue an active interrogation. Perhaps it was that she had charmed him from the first, or that he felt responsible as her rescuer. They were happy together; perhaps he did not want to know any more than that.

Weeks passed and their companionship deepened. He admired her grace, her intellectual curiosity, and appreciated her affectionate nature. Imogene was usually content to curl up beside him and spend quiet evenings sharing his jazz collection. But one night, when Imogene decided Illya had spent too much time hunched over his desk, she took action. She reached over his files and scattered his paperwork every which way. Before he could protest, she snuggled seductively across his chest, nibbled his ear, insisted on his attention, and claimed her right to his strong, gentle hands, his alluring voice, and his rumpled bed.

Kuryakin had been away on assignment, just an ordinary mission When he returned, Imogene was unusually clingy, then incomprehensibly cool. He was puzzled; he was a man. It took him about a week to discern the cause of her moodiness. Nature itself had revealed her indiscretion.

Imogene had not been able to tell him in so many words. Was she afraid of his reaction? God, that made him feel like a monster. Of course she had seen him in action; she knew he could be dangerous. Now she just sat before him, gazing up with her teary green eyes, pleading for forgiveness, for kindness, for unconditional love, both for her and the life within her.

The vulnerability that had led him to shelter her in the first place was in evidence again.

How could he consider turning her out into a world where she had no one, alone but for the growing innocent life in her belly? He raised up out of his battered chair and she flinched. Could she have lived with him all that time, and still believed he could be that cruel?

Kuryakin strode past her and out the door, her crying followed him into the night. He walked purposefully past the alley where she had been helpless. He had not abandoned her then, when she had been a stranger. Now she was part of his life.

Had she been lonely over the course of his last mission? Had he neglected her? He'd been distracted before he left. Perhaps the very curiosity and passion and independence he valued in her, had combined to lead Imogene outside the home he now considered "theirs." Not that he had bothered to legalize their living arrangement. Illya had assumed Imogene felt the way he did, that no piece of paper from the state could make them belong together any more than they already did. Had he taken her fidelity for granted? His action would depend on one simple answer: did he want to keep Imogene in his life?

The apartment was dark and still when he returned. He saw her across the room, stretched along his couch, worn out with weeping. Gently he carried her back to their bed and whispered, "Don't worry, dear one; although I did not anticipate this, we'll get through the challenge together."

Six weeks later, Illya posted a note on the commissary bulletin board: Kittens. Free to a good home.

finis


End file.
